Quantum Frontiers
Quantum computing vs. Grubhub
pon receiving my speaking assignments for the Tucson Festival of Books, I mentally raised my...
3rd Apr 2023
pon receiving my speaking assignments for the Tucson Festival of Books, I mentally raised my eyebrows. I’d be participating in a panel discussion with Mike Evans, the founder of Grubhub? But I hadn’t created an app that’s a household name. I … Continue reading →
Explorations of an...
Borneo 2024: Introduction And Pre-Tour Birding
About a month ago, I returned to Sabah in east Malaysia for my fourth tour of duty as a guide for...
3rd Nov 2024
About a month ago, I returned to Sabah in east Malaysia for my fourth tour of duty as a guide for Quest Nature Tours. I've always said that Borneo is one of my favourite tours that I run and even after three previous trips I was looking forward to returning. One of the main...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
How do we increase competition for hospitals? | Out-Of-Pocket
Otherwise prices will keep going up?
5th Feb 2026
Otherwise prices will keep going up?
Works in Progress...
Why didn’t suicides rise during Covid?
Covid-19 brought death, suffering and financial straits, so it was unsurprising that depression rose...
20th May 2021
Covid-19 brought death, suffering and financial straits, so it was unsurprising that depression rose around the world. But when the data came in, we found suicide did not – and it’s a mystery why.
Uncharted...
How to Beat Cancer with Viruses: An Interview with Beata Halassy
How viruses kill cancers, which viruses to use, how many injections, at what stage of the cancer,...
1st Oct 2024
How viruses kill cancers, which viruses to use, how many injections, at what stage of the cancer, and much more
Wanderingspace
URANUS FROM THE JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE
This is not natural light, nothing is from Webb. The infrared image combines data from two filters...
21st Jul 2023
This is not natural light, nothing is from Webb. The infrared image combines data from two filters which are shown in blue and orange,. The planet displays a blue hue in the resulting representative-color image which is similar to the planet’s actual color. But in reality Uranus...
ToughSF
Riding Sunbeams with Solar Sails
Reset your expectations of solar sails. They are a fast and free way to travel to any point in the...
26th May 2023
Reset your expectations of solar sails. They are a fast and free way to travel to any point in the Solar System, as many times as you want, any time of the year.
Solar sails can carry passengers and they have a nearly unlimited number of uses. You just have to... think...
Andrew Fraknoi –...
Drone Madness: Here is the Antidote
For those of us who, through the years, have been through wave after wave of uncritical and...
16th Dec 2024
For those of us who, through the years, have been through wave after wave of uncritical and sensational UFO stories in the media, the current obsession with (and jumping to unwarranted conclusions about) mysterious drones seems all too familiar. As before, untrained observers,...
Works in Progress...
The evolution of bacteria
Generations of microbes evolve in hours, not millennia. By speeding up Darwin’s clock, scientists...
5th Nov 2025
Generations of microbes evolve in hours, not millennia. By speeding up Darwin’s clock, scientists have watched evolution happen in real time, and it’s changed how we understand natural selection.
Long Now
Neal Stephenson: Polostan
Neal Stephenson, visionary speculative fiction author and long-time friend of Long Now, joined us...
14th Nov 2024
Neal Stephenson, visionary speculative fiction author and long-time friend of Long Now, joined us for a conversation with journalist Charles C. Mann on the research behind his new novel _Polostan_ , the dawn of the Atomic Age, and the craft of historical storytelling....
The Quanta Podcast
Graduate Student's Side Project Proves Prime Number Conjecture
Jared Duker Lichtman, 26, has proved a longstanding conjecture relating prime numbers to a broad...
14th Sep 2022
Jared Duker Lichtman, 26, has proved a longstanding conjecture relating prime numbers to a broad class of “primitive” sets. To his adviser, it came as a “complete shock.” Read more at quantamagazine.org. Music is “Thought Bot” by Audionautix.
IEEE Spectrum
Ethernet is Still Going Strong After 50 Years
The Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in California has spawned many pioneering computer technologies...
16th Nov 2023
The Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in California has spawned many pioneering computer technologies including the Alto—the first personal computer to use a graphical user interface—and the first laser printer.
The PARC facility also is known for the invention of Ethernet, a...
Long Now
Susan Freinkel: Eternal Plastic
### Making plastic even better
Plastic is so new, Freinkel began, that among all the objects...
23rd May 2012
### Making plastic even better
Plastic is so new, Freinkel began, that among all the objects preserved in the sunken _Titanic_ , none are synthetic plastic, because there was hardly any available in 1912. Natural plastic, however, was a familiar material. Amber was popular....
Quantum Frontiers
Lessons in frustration
Assa Auerbach’s course was the most maddening course I’ve ever taken. I was a master’s student in...
17th Feb 2025
Assa Auerbach’s course was the most maddening course I’ve ever taken. I was a master’s student in the Perimeter Scholars International program at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Perimeter trotted in world experts to lecture about modern physics. Many … Continue...
Quantum Frontiers
A (quantum) complex legacy: Part deux
I didn’t fancy the research suggestion emailed by my PhD advisor. A 2016 email from John Preskill...
20th Feb 2023
I didn’t fancy the research suggestion emailed by my PhD advisor. A 2016 email from John Preskill led to my publishing a paper about quantum complexity in 2022, as I explained in last month’s blog post. But I didn’t explain … Continue reading →
Quanta Magazine
Covid-19 mRNA Vaccines Win Nobel Prize for Medicine 2023
Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman have been awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine...
2nd Oct 2023
Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman have been awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries leading to mRNA vaccines, such as those that protect against COVID-19.
The post Covid-19 mRNA Vaccines Win Nobel Prize for Medicine 2023 first appeared on...
pcloadletter
Make your PR process resilient to AI slop
One concern I have heard from AI naysayers is that AI slop will make code reviews nearly impossible....
24th Dec 2025
One concern I have heard from AI naysayers is that AI slop will make code reviews nearly impossible. AI churns out so much code, documentation, etc. that it's just impossible for any reviewer to keep up with it... right?
Wrong!
If you have good PR review processes, then reviewing...
The Quanta Podcast
Amateur Mathematician Finds Smallest Universal Cover
Through exacting geometric calculations, Philip Gibbs has found the smallest known cover for any...
6th Sep 2019
Through exacting geometric calculations, Philip Gibbs has found the smallest known cover for any possible shape.
The post Amateur Mathematician Finds Smallest Universal Cover first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quantum Frontiers
The Noncommuting-Charges World Tour (Part 1 of 4)
Introduction: “Once Upon a Time”…with a twist Thermodynamics problems have surprisingly many...
1st Feb 2024
Introduction: “Once Upon a Time”…with a twist Thermodynamics problems have surprisingly many similarities with fairy tales. For example, most of them begin with a familiar opening. In thermodynamics, the phrase “Consider an isolated box of particles” serves a similar purpose …...
Many Worlds
Many Worlds Archive is Available
I had the pleasure of reporting and writing the Many Worlds column — sponsored by NASA’s NExSS...
14th Nov 2023
I had the pleasure of reporting and writing the Many Worlds column — sponsored by NASA’s NExSS initiative and the Lunar & Planetary Institute — for almost eight years. But the run came to an end in October. Now an archive of the more than 400 columns is easily available at...
Long Now
Robert Fuller: Patient Revolution: Human Rights Past and Future
### The culminating human right
What does it take to change human habits of cruelty (such as...
13th Aug 2005
### The culminating human right
What does it take to change human habits of cruelty (such as slavery, genocide) and humiliation (racism, sexism)?
What do past and present efforts for human rights tell about their future?…
Robert Fuller is author of the ground-breaking...
Quanta Magazine
How Math Has Changed the Shape of Gerrymandering
New tools make it possible to detect hidden manipulation of maps.
The post How Math Has...
1st Jun 2023
New tools make it possible to detect hidden manipulation of maps.
The post How Math Has Changed the Shape of Gerrymandering first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Light from Space
Andromeda: Our Galactic Neighbor
Many things have been said about the Andromeda Galaxy, arguably the most majestic galaxy that...
27th Sep 2024
Many things have been said about the Andromeda Galaxy, arguably the most majestic galaxy that amateur astronomers can image due to it's sheer size in the sky—many times larger than the Moon appears to us, but also many times dimmer.
With the naked eye, even in
ToughSF
Hypervelocity Macron Accelerators
We
look at the various ways of accelerating micro-scale projectiles up to hypervelocity
(10-10,000...
27th Nov 2019
We
look at the various ways of accelerating micro-scale projectiles up to hypervelocity
(10-10,000 km/s) and their use in space.
Going
small to go fast
Macrons
or macroscopic particles are tiny projectiles that sit on the border between
the complex structures we see under a...
Stephen Wolfram...
Nestedly Recursive Functions
Yet Another Ruliological Surprise Integers. Addition. Subtraction. Maybe multiplication. Surely...
27th Sep 2024
Yet Another Ruliological Surprise Integers. Addition. Subtraction. Maybe multiplication. Surely that’s not enough to be able to generate any serious complexity. In the early 1980s I had made the very surprising discovery that very simple programs based on cellular automata could...
Long Now
Maya Tudor: Can Nationalism be a Resource for Democracy?
A political scientist examines how foundational nationalisms affect democracy globally, using...
6th May 2019
A political scientist examines how foundational nationalisms affect democracy globally, using countries like India and Myanmar to illustrate that some kinds of nationalism can be an essential resource for protecting democracy.
Maya Tudor is a comparative political scientist...
Drew Ex Machina
Drew Ex Machina 10th Anniversary: Top Ten Posts
I find it difficult to believe but, it was ten years ago today that I posted the first article on my...
27th Mar 2024
I find it difficult to believe but, it was ten years ago today that I posted the first article on my then-new website, Drew Ex Machina. […]
The Roots of...
Cellular reprogramming, pneumatic launch systems, and terraforming Mars
In December, I went to the Foresight Institute’s Vision Weekend 2023 in San Francisco. I had a lot...
4th Jan 2024
In December, I went to the Foresight Institute’s Vision Weekend 2023 in San Francisco. I had a lot of fun talking to a bunch of weird and ambitious geeks about the glorious abundant technological future. Here are few things I learned about (with the caveat that this is mostly...
Long Now
Geoff Manaugh & Nicola Twilley: Until Proven Safe: The History and Future of Quarantine
**Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley** track the history and future of quarantine around the globe,...
8th Feb 2022
**Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley** track the history and future of quarantine around the globe, chasing the story of emergency isolation through time and space—from the crumbling lazarettos of the Mediterranean, built to contain the Black Death, to an experimental Ebola unit in...
Many Worlds
The Makeup of Red Dwarf Solar Systems May Seriously Limit the Formation of Habitable Planets
Jupiter is often described as the “big brother” planet of our solar system that made the formation...
7th Jun 2023
Jupiter is often described as the “big brother” planet of our solar system that made the formation and evolution of Earth possible. In the early days of the solar system, massive Jupiter helped the planet grow rapidly while serving as a gravity well that shielded the planet from...
Probably...
Simpson’s What?
I like Simpson’s paradox so much I wrote three chapters about it in Probably Overthinking It. In...
16th Oct 2025
I like Simpson’s paradox so much I wrote three chapters about it in Probably Overthinking It. In fact, I like it so much I have a Google alert that notifies me when someone publishes a new example (or when the horse named Simpson’s Paradox wins a race). So I was initially excited...
Works in Progress...
Interview: Ted Nordhaus on ecomodernism
Are technology and the environment friends or foes? In this wide-ranging conversation, we discuss...
20th May 2021
Are technology and the environment friends or foes? In this wide-ranging conversation, we discuss climate policy, activism and ecomodernism with Ted Nordhaus.
Drew Ex Machina
Critical Forecasts from Space: “Tech & Space Leaders Show” with Lisa Dreher
While my Gentle Readers are well aware of my decades of writing on space-related topics, I also have...
8th Aug 2026
While my Gentle Readers are well aware of my decades of writing on space-related topics, I also have a day job as the Chief Scientist of […]
lcamtuf’s thing
Weekend trivia: your process' memory is a file
The underappreciated gem of /proc/
/mem
1st Jun 2026
The underappreciated gem of /proc/
/mem
Inverted Passion
Words are minimum-viable coordination tools
Words have a bewitching tendency as we assume they point to some deep essences. But, game...
4th Feb 2026
Words have a bewitching tendency as we assume they point to some deep essences. But, game theoretically speaking, words exist to get a job done so they operate at the level of coarse graining that’s sufficient to get the job done of the speaker. Evolution doesn’t like to waste...
Long Now
Mark Lynas: The Nine Planetary Boundaries
### The Quantified Planet
“About 74,000 years ago,” Lynas began, “a volcanic event nearly wiped out...
7th Mar 2012
### The Quantified Planet
“About 74,000 years ago,” Lynas began, “a volcanic event nearly wiped out humanity. We were down to just a thousand or so embattled breeding pairs. We’ve made a bit of a comeback since then. We’re over seven billion strong. In half a million years we’ve...
The Quanta Podcast
Ants Live 10 Times Longer by Altering Their Insulin Responses
Queen ants live far longer than genetically identical workers. Researchers are learning what their...
7th Jun 2023
Queen ants live far longer than genetically identical workers. Researchers are learning what their longevity secrets could mean for aging in other species. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Good Times” by Patrick Patrikios.
Explorations of an...
Making The Most Of Winter
The winter of 2025-2026 is shaping up to be a proper one. Since basically the start of December we...
4th Feb 2026
The winter of 2025-2026 is shaping up to be a proper one. Since basically the start of December we have experienced below average temperatures and an abundance of snow. We haven't had much respite from the cold, other than a brief warm spell in January quickly followed by an...
Bartosz Ciechanowski
Bicycle
There is something delightful about riding a bicycle. Once mastered, the simple action of pedaling...
28th Mar 2023
There is something delightful about riding a bicycle. Once mastered, the simple action of pedaling to move forward and turning the handlebars to steer makes bike riding an effortless activity. In the demonstration below, you can guide the rider with the slider, and you can also...
Peder M. Isager
Fifty ways to leave your model
A method for calculating the number of alternative causal models, given a number of variables/nodes.
15th Feb 2020
A method for calculating the number of alternative causal models, given a number of variables/nodes.
Long Now
Julia Galef: Soldiers and Scouts: Why our minds weren't built for truth, and how we can change that
An expert on rationality, judgement, and strategy, Julia Galef notes that "our capacity for reason...
19th Sep 2018
An expert on rationality, judgement, and strategy, Julia Galef notes that "our capacity for reason evolved to serve two very different purposes that are often at odds with each other. On the one hand, reason helps us figure out what’s true; on the other hand, it also helps us...
NeuroLogica Blog
Virtual Walking
When I use my virtual reality gear I do practical zero virtual walking – meaning that I don’t have...
1st Mar 2024
When I use my virtual reality gear I do practical zero virtual walking – meaning that I don’t have my avatar walk while I am not walking. I general play standing up which means I can move around the space in my office mapped by my VR software – so I am physically walking to...
Sean Carroll
AMA | June 2026
Welcome to the June 2026 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded...
1st Jun 2026
Welcome to the June 2026 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who […]
Damn Interesting
Hunting For Kobyla
On a January day in 1964, something remarkable happened: Simon Wiesenthal took the afternoon off. He...
7th Feb 2022
On a January day in 1964, something remarkable happened: Simon Wiesenthal took the afternoon off. He parked himself at a table on the terrace of Tel Aviv’s Café Roval, soaking up the sunshine as if he wished to bottle it. The friend he’d come to meet was late, but Wiesenthal had...
Chris Grossack's...
Is a Random Perfect Group Nontrivial?
So it’s finals season, and earlier today
some of the younger grad students were asking me for...
20th Mar 2026
So it’s finals season, and earlier today
some of the younger grad students were asking me for help
studying for their topology finals. One of their practice
problems was to build a cell complex with one 0-cell,
two 1-cells, and two 2-cells which has nontrivial $\pi_1$
but...
IEEE Spectrum
Lord Kelvin and His Analog Computer
William Thomson, mourning the death of his wife and flush with cash from various patents related to...
2nd Jun 2024
William Thomson, mourning the death of his wife and flush with cash from various patents related to the laying of the first transatlantic telegraph cable, decided to buy a yacht. His schooner, the Lalla Rookh, became Thomson’s summer home and his base for hosting scientific...
Cremieux Recueil
National IQs Are Valid
National IQ estimates are robust, reliable, and realistic
16th Jan 2025
National IQ estimates are robust, reliable, and realistic
Works in Progress...
How to write for Works in Progress
We’re looking for new authors and article pitches.
4th Apr 2025
We’re looking for new authors and article pitches.
Long Now
Richard Kurin: American History in 101 Objects
### American objects
Figuratively holding up one museum item after another, Kurin spun tales from...
19th Nov 2013
### American objects
Figuratively holding up one museum item after another, Kurin spun tales from them. (The Smithsonian has 137 million objects; he displayed just thirty or so.)
The Burgess Shale shows fossilized soft-tissue creatures ("very early North Americans") from 500...
Yale E360
As Hurricanes Stir Up Coastal Waters, North Carolina Homes Collapse Into the Sea
Five unoccupied homes on North Carolina's Outer Banks collapsed into the sea Tuesday as hurricanes...
1st Oct 2025
Five unoccupied homes on North Carolina's Outer Banks collapsed into the sea Tuesday as hurricanes Humberto and Imelda coursed through the Atlantic, stirring up coastal waters. The Outer Banks have seen 17 seaside homes destroyed since 2020.
Read more on E360 →
Long Now
Paul Hawken: The Long Green
### The long green
The environmental movement has moved on. It has become so deep and wide that it...
16th Oct 2004
### The long green
The environmental movement has moved on. It has become so deep and wide that it adds up to something new entirely, still unnamed. Whatever it is, it is now the largest movement in the world and the least ideological. Driven by science and patience, it is...
Quantum Frontiers
My favorite rocket scientist
Whenever someone protests, “I’m not a rocket scientist,” I think of my friend Jamie Rankin. Jamie is...
8th Jul 2024
Whenever someone protests, “I’m not a rocket scientist,” I think of my friend Jamie Rankin. Jamie is a researcher at Princeton University, and she showed me her lab this June. When I first met Jamie, she was testing instruments to … Continue reading →
Quanta Magazine
Alan Turing and the Power of Negative Thinking
Mathematical proofs based on a technique called diagonalization can be relentlessly contrarian, but...
5th Sep 2023
Mathematical proofs based on a technique called diagonalization can be relentlessly contrarian, but they help reveal the limits of algorithms.
The post Alan Turing and the Power of Negative Thinking first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Damn Interesting
The Traveler and His Baggage
On 19 May 1943, a news report from Berlin deepened the already dreary gloom that clung to the people...
3rd Jun 2021
On 19 May 1943, a news report from Berlin deepened the already dreary gloom that clung to the people of Nazi-occupied Paris. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels proudly announced to the world that the German capital of Berlin was officially judenfrei–free of all Jews. As this...
Eukaryote Writes...
Speciesquest 2026
A multiplayer distributed game where you find as many species in a year as you can.
31st Dec 2025
A multiplayer distributed game where you find as many species in a year as you can.
Beautiful Public...
14,000 Photos of Army Uniforms and Rations from the 70s and 80s
An incredible archive of 14,000 photos of Army uniforms, military gear and rations from the 70s and...
20th Nov 2024
An incredible archive of 14,000 photos of Army uniforms, military gear and rations from the 70s and 80s.
The Roots of...
What is progress?
In one sense, the concept of progress is simple, straightforward, and uncontroversial. In another...
9th Mar 2024
In one sense, the concept of progress is simple, straightforward, and uncontroversial. In another sense, it contains an entire worldview.
The most basic meaning of “progress” is simply advancement along a path, or more generally from one state to another that is considered more...
Long Now
George Dyson: There's Plenty of Room at the Top: Long-term Thinking About Large-scale Computing
### Long-term thinking about large-scale computing
Ever since his 1997 breakthrough book, _Darwin...
10th Jan 2004
### Long-term thinking about large-scale computing
Ever since his 1997 breakthrough book, _Darwin Among the Machines_ , Dyson has become regarded as a leading historian and interpreter of computer science, bringing a rigorous and unconventional perspective. Thus his willingness...
Quanta Magazine
At 17, Hannah Cairo Solved a Major Math Mystery
After finding the homeschooling life confining, the teen petitioned her way into a graduate class at...
1st Aug 2025
After finding the homeschooling life confining, the teen petitioned her way into a graduate class at Berkeley, where she ended up disproving a 40-year-old conjecture.
The post At 17, Hannah Cairo Solved a Major Math Mystery first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Peder M. Isager
Choosing what to replicate - Efficient study selection in the modern age.
1st May 2020
Quantum Frontiers
John Preskill receives 2025 Quantum Leadership Award
The 2025 Quantum Leadership Awards were announced at the Quantum World Congress on 18 September...
18th Sep 2025
The 2025 Quantum Leadership Awards were announced at the Quantum World Congress on 18 September 2025. Upon receiving the Academic Pioneer of the Year Award, John Preskill made these remarks. I’m enormously excited and honored to receive this Quantum Leadership … Continue reading...
Long Now
Kishore Mahbubani: Has the West Lost It? Can Asia Save It?
In Kishore Mahbubani’s view, global power is shifting from the West to the Rest—from Europe and...
1st May 2018
In Kishore Mahbubani’s view, global power is shifting from the West to the Rest—from Europe and North America to Asia and Africa. He argues that changes will be required both in the West and the Rest to manage the shift gracefully for long-term stability. The rest of the world...
Andrew Fraknoi –...
An Eclipse of the Sun Coming to N. America April 8th
A rare eclipse of the Sun will be visible all over North America on April 8th.
The post An Eclipse...
23rd Mar 2024
A rare eclipse of the Sun will be visible all over North America on April 8th.
The post An Eclipse of the Sun Coming to N. America April 8th appeared first on Andrew Fraknoi - Astronomy Lectures - Astronomy Education Resources.
Casey Handmer's blog
Scaling Career and Family: Systems Thinking, Public School, Home Enrichment
Originally posted on November 29, 2025 by Dr. Christine Corbett Moran When asked on The Cheeky Pint...
3rd Dec 2025
Originally posted on November 29, 2025 by Dr. Christine Corbett Moran When asked on The Cheeky Pint podcast how we educate our children, my husband Casey Handmer replied “benign neglect.” It’s a cheeky answer that captures something real: we’re neither tiger nor helicopter...
Peder M. Isager
Typography Styles & Element Examples
Font Sizes A A A A A A A A 6rem
(96px) 5rem
(80px) 3rem
(48px) 2.25rem
(36px) 1.5rem
(24px)...
18th Feb 2019
Font Sizes A A A A A A A A 6rem
(96px) 5rem
(80px) 3rem
(48px) 2.25rem
(36px) 1.5rem
(24px) 1.25rem
(20px) 1rem
(16px) .875rem
(14px) Type Samples Headline Subheadline Level 1 Heading One page to rule them all...well, not really. This page displays sample typography and page...
Andrew Fraknoi –...
A Nice (Almost Total) Eclipse of the Moon Aug. 27
How to get information about viewing the eclipse of the Moon Aug. 27
The post A Nice (Almost Total)...
3 weeks ago
How to get information about viewing the eclipse of the Moon Aug. 27
The post A Nice (Almost Total) Eclipse of the Moon Aug. 27 appeared first on Andrew Fraknoi - Astronomy Lectures - Astronomy Education Resources.
Quantum Frontiers
The physicists of Florence
A scientist in Florence can’t avoid bumping into colleagues. When visiting the Renaissance’s...
29th Jun 2026
A scientist in Florence can’t avoid bumping into colleagues. When visiting the Renaissance’s birthplace last summer, I ran into a fellow physicist even on a Saturday morning. I was wandering around the Uffizi Gallery, a museum blessed with some of … Continue reading →
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Can AI solve the pain of endless hold times? | Out-Of-Pocket
A look at how it works under the hood + what Assort is doing
11th Nov 2025
A look at how it works under the hood + what Assort is doing
Yale E360
Nearly Half of Wolves in Italy Are Now Part Dog
Italy has seen a growing number of wolf-dog hybrids, raising concerns about the future of its...
1st May 2026
Italy has seen a growing number of wolf-dog hybrids, raising concerns about the future of its wolves.
Read more on E360 →
brr
South Pole Water Infrastructure
Fresh water from snow, at 70 below!
8th Jun 2024
Fresh water from snow, at 70 below!
The Works in...
The San Diego infinite housing glitch
How a bonus ADU program allows 'granny towers' in gardens
2nd Oct 2024
How a bonus ADU program allows 'granny towers' in gardens
Probably...
New Book!
I am working on a new book called You Would Choose Now: Measuring America’s Progress Toward Fairness...
a week ago
I am working on a new book called You Would Choose Now: Measuring America’s Progress Toward Fairness and Tolerance. It’s a data-driven exploration of progress (or not) in public opinion and civil rights. I posted the first two chapters as an Early Access edition on LeanPub (a...
Explorations of an...
Colombia: Santa Marta Mountains And Caribbean Coast
I have recently returned from an excellent tour of northern Colombia for Quest Nature Tours. This...
4th Apr 2026
I have recently returned from an excellent tour of northern Colombia for Quest Nature Tours. This was my fourth time guiding for Quest here, in the birdiest country in the world. Birdiest may be a bold claim, but eBird shows 1,956 species recorded for Colombia, while the...
nanoscale views
So you want to build a science/engineering laboratory building
A very quick summary of some non-negative news developments:
The NSF awarded 500 more graduate...
15th Jun 2025
A very quick summary of some non-negative news developments:
The NSF awarded 500 more graduate fellowships this week, bringing the total for this year up to 1500. (Apologies for the X link.) This is still 25% lower than last year's number, and of course far below the original...
Marine Madness
Book Club: ‘The Island of Sea Women’ by Lisa See
Little is known about Jeju- a Korean island- occupied by brutal Japanese troops in the 1930s and...
1st Sep 2021
Little is known about Jeju- a Korean island- occupied by brutal Japanese troops in the 1930s and ’40s, later liberated by US forces and turned over to the even more barbarous Korean regime whose wrongdoings were overlooked by both American and U.N. occupiers. Lisa See travels...
Long Now
Esther Dyson: The Short Now: What Addiction, Day Trading, and Most of Society’s Ills Have in Common
Long Now board member Esther Dyson shares her ongoing work to move communities away from short-term...
9th Jan 2020
Long Now board member Esther Dyson shares her ongoing work to move communities away from short-term thinking and into health. In conversation with previous Interval speaker [Kara Platoni](http://www.karaplatoni.com/), she discusses how short-term desire is addiction, affecting...
Inverted Passion
Why aren’t things changing faster?
Been wondering lately that given everyone has a consultant with all the world’s knowledge in their...
4th May 2026
Been wondering lately that given everyone has a consultant with all the world’s knowledge in their pockets, we should be seeing efficiency rise across the board everywhere. Literally everyone can now get personalised advise on how to serve their customers better, improve quality...
Works in Progress...
The housing theory of everything
Western housing shortages do not just prevent many from ever affording their own home. They also...
14th Sep 2021
Western housing shortages do not just prevent many from ever affording their own home. They also drive inequality, climate change, low productivity growth, obesity, and even falling fertility rates.
The Quanta Podcast
Computer Scientists Expand the Frontier of Verifiable Knowledge
The universe of problems that a computer can check has grown. The researchers’ secret ingredient?...
9th Apr 2020
The universe of problems that a computer can check has grown. The researchers’ secret ingredient? Quantum entanglement.
The post Computer Scientists Expand the Frontier of Verifiable Knowledge first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Stephen Wolfram...
New Features Everywhere: Launching Version 14.3 of Wolfram Language & Mathematica
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#blog .post_content .inline-table-of-contents {...
5th Aug 2025
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#blog .post_content .inline-table-of-contents { background-color: #f6fcff; border: solid 1px #bbdbe8; padding: 24px 20px 10px 20px; }
#blog .post_content .inline-table-of-contents div a { color: #19749a; font-size: 14px; line-height:...
The Quanta Podcast
When ChatGPT Broke an Entire Field
The study of natural language processing, or NLP, dates back to the 1940s. It gave Stephen Hawking a...
29th Jul 2025
The study of natural language processing, or NLP, dates back to the 1940s. It gave Stephen Hawking a voice, Siri a brain and social media companies another way to target us with ads. In less than five years, large language models broke NLP and made it anew.
The Quanta Podcast,...
The Quanta Podcast
New Theory Cracks Open the Black Box of Deep Learning
A new idea is helping to explain the puzzling success of today’s artificial-intelligence algorithms...
1st Mar 2018
A new idea is helping to explain the puzzling success of today’s artificial-intelligence algorithms — and might also explain how human brains learn.
The post New Theory Cracks Open the Black Box of Deep Learning first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Out-of-Pocket Blog
2024 Healthcare Predictions, Out-Of-Pocket Style | Out-Of-Pocket
I'm not a fortune teller, I'm a fortune, teller
12th Dec 2023
I'm not a fortune teller, I'm a fortune, teller
The Quanta Podcast
How the 'Diamond of the Plant World' Helped Land Plants Evolve
Structural studies of the robust material called sporopollenin reveal how it made plants hardy...
9th Nov 2022
Structural studies of the robust material called sporopollenin reveal how it made plants hardy enough to reproduce on dry land. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Redwood Trail” by Audionautix.
IEEE Spectrum
Smalltalk Blew Steve Jobs’s Mind
Late in 1979, Steve Jobs and other colleagues from Apple visited the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center...
1st Mar 2023
Late in 1979, Steve Jobs and other colleagues from Apple visited the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). There they were introduced to the experimental Alto computer and the Smalltalk language and computing environment, developed by Alan Kay’s Learning Research Group....
NeuroLogica Blog
What to Make of Havana Syndrome
I have not written before about Havana Syndrome, mostly because I have not been able to come to any...
1st Apr 2024
I have not written before about Havana Syndrome, mostly because I have not been able to come to any strong conclusions about it. In 2016 there was a cluster of strange neurological symptoms among people working at the US Embassy in Havana, Cuba. They would suddenly experience...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
How To (Properly) Text Patients | Out-Of-Pocket
Do’s and don’ts + tactical tips from an actual doctor
10th Apr 2024
Do’s and don’ts + tactical tips from an actual doctor
The Works in...
How Poor Maintenance Loses Wars: 1973, Israel Maintains
A new section from Stewart Brand's Maintenance on Books in Progress
5th Oct 2023
A new section from Stewart Brand's Maintenance on Books in Progress
Cremieux Recueil
"You Couldn't Replicate Our Study Because You're Ugly"
Attractiveness rating studies shouldn't be taken too seriously
3rd Dec 2024
Attractiveness rating studies shouldn't be taken too seriously
Works in Progress...
Samurai city
For three hundred years, Japan enjoyed enviable stability and peace. All it took was locking up its...
2nd Jun 2026
For three hundred years, Japan enjoyed enviable stability and peace. All it took was locking up its warlike samurai elite in the world’s least efficient city.
Works in Progress...
A look at Britain’s new DARPA
ARIA is the UK’s visionary new scientific funding body. It has £800m and the freedom to make big...
10th Feb 2023
ARIA is the UK’s visionary new scientific funding body. It has £800m and the freedom to make big bold bets on the scientific trajectories it thinks will benefit Britain – and change the future. We interviewed chief executive Ilan Gur and chairman Matt Clifford, to better...
Stephen Wolfram...
Towards a Theory of Bugs: The Ruliology of the Unexpected
21st Jul 2026
Beautiful Public...
How LiDAR measures the toll of climate disasters
Comparing LiDAR data from before and after the January 2025 fires in Los Angeles reveals the scale...
25th Aug 2025
Comparing LiDAR data from before and after the January 2025 fires in Los Angeles reveals the scale of devastation in ways satellite imagery can’t match.
The Quanta Podcast
Pentagon Tiling Proof Solves Century-Old Math Problem
A French mathematician has completed the classification of all convex pentagons, and therefore all...
21st Sep 2017
A French mathematician has completed the classification of all convex pentagons, and therefore all convex polygons, that tile the plane.
The post Pentagon Tiling Proof Solves Century-Old Math Problem first appeared on Quanta Magazine
wadertales
Peatland restoration – ploughing for plovers.
Commercial forestry was never a good option for the wet peatlands of northeast Scotland, with...
16th Aug 2025
Commercial forestry was never a good option for the wet peatlands of northeast Scotland, with planting financed by tax subsidies and sold on the mantra of ‘rural jobs’. The trees did not grow well and, thirty years on, more government money started to be spent to restore the same...
Quantum Frontiers
My friend Mark Wise
Mark Wise, the John A. McCone Professor of High Energy Physics at Caltech, passed away on July 10 at...
18th Jul 2026
Mark Wise, the John A. McCone Professor of High Energy Physics at Caltech, passed away on July 10 at age 72. At a recent memorial service, John Preskill made these remarks. I’m John Preskill, Mark’s colleague on the Caltech physics … Continue reading →
Long Now
Martin Rees: Life's Future in the Cosmos
### Cosmic Life
The pace of astronomic discovery, said the Astronomer Royal, keeps increasing with...
3rd Aug 2010
### Cosmic Life
The pace of astronomic discovery, said the Astronomer Royal, keeps increasing with the constant improvement in our sensing technology. The recent discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe (dark energy) revolutionized cosmology, and with the launch...
Melting Asphalt
Crony Beliefs
[Note: if you prefer audio, you can listen to this essay narrated by Grognor on his excellent...
2nd Nov 2016
[Note: if you prefer audio, you can listen to this essay narrated by Grognor on his excellent podcast Second Enumerations. —Ed.] Credits up front: This essay draws heavily from Overcoming Bias, Less Wrong, Slate Star Codex, Robert Kurzban, Robert…
Read more ›
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Things I’m watching in healthcare 2023 | Out-Of-Pocket
it's been a weird year
5th Mar 2024
Conservation...
'My son's son will see this elephant'
6th Jul 2026
Long Now
Wayne Clough: Smithsonian Forever
### The Smithsonian's long now
[Note for those who mentally enunciate words while reading: the last...
18th Aug 2009
### The Smithsonian's long now
[Note for those who mentally enunciate words while reading: the last name is pronounced "Cluff."]
Secretary Clough reminded the audience that we own the Smithsonian, and what that amounts to is 19 museums and galleries containing 137 million...
brr
The Beer Can
Connecting old and new.
18th Mar 2023
Conservation...
For this scientist, the ‘real work’ is in listening
3rd Feb 2025
Peder M. Isager
Four one-sided test of significance (FOST). Dear reader, does this make sense?
In this blog post I propose a four one-sided test of significance (FOST) that can be used to test...
24th May 2024
In this blog post I propose a four one-sided test of significance (FOST) that can be used to test whether an effect is smaller than OR larger than OR equivalent to the smallest effect size of interest. I lay out the general setup and interpretation of FOST, and ask readers to...
Interaction Magic -...
Orientation
Using Mahony & Madgwick to calibrate and process Arduino orientation data.
1st Jul 2018
Using Mahony & Madgwick to calibrate and process Arduino orientation data.
Long Now
Louis Hyman: The New Deal You Don't Know
Historian Louis Hyman's work focuses on the history of American capitalism. In his book _[Borrow:...
2nd Jan 2018
Historian Louis Hyman's work focuses on the history of American capitalism. In his book _[Borrow: The American Way of Debt](https://www.amazon.com/Borrow-American-Debt-Vintage-Original/dp/0307741680/)_ , he examines in detail how the evolution of personal debt has not only...
Quantum Frontiers
Nicole’s guide to handling failure and rejection
It’s happening. Your inbox registers an email from the chair of a faculty-hiring committee. With...
21st May 2026
It’s happening. Your inbox registers an email from the chair of a faculty-hiring committee. With trembling fingers, you click on the message. “We’ve been grateful for the opportunity to learn about your work…The decision was very difficult…many highly qualified candidates…” …...
Conservation...
It’s about TIME: Conservationist recognized as climate leader
16th Nov 2023
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Pregnancy taught me a lot about healthcare | Out-Of-Pocket
A personal story and a patient journey
3rd Aug 2026
A personal story and a patient journey
Willem Pennings
ClockSquared improvements
My ClockSquared project has a long history – it goes all the way back to 2015, when it was simply...
4th Feb 2023
My ClockSquared project has a long history – it goes all the way back to 2015, when it was simply called the “Birthday word clock”. I haven’t spent much time on the project in recent years, but I’ve upgraded the internals a while ago and finally felt like writing a post about it....
The Quanta Podcast
The Grand Unified Theory of Rogue Waves
Rogue waves — enigmatic giants of the sea — were thought to be caused by two different mechanisms....
5th Nov 2020
Rogue waves — enigmatic giants of the sea — were thought to be caused by two different mechanisms. But a new idea that borrows from the hinterlands of probability theory has the potential to predict them all.
The post The Grand Unified Theory of Rogue Waves first...
Stephen Wolfram...
What If We Had Bigger Brains? Imagining Minds beyond Ours
Cats Don’t Talk
We humans have perhaps 100 billion neurons in our brains. But what if we had many...
21st May 2025
Cats Don’t Talk
We humans have perhaps 100 billion neurons in our brains. But what if we had many more? Or what if the AIs we built effectively had many more? What kinds of things might then become possible? At 100 billion neurons, we know, for example, that compositional...
Probably...
Planning for your midlife crisis
Yesterday I presented a talk at ODSC East 2026, called “Counterfactual Analysis with Bayesian...
1st May 2026
Yesterday I presented a talk at ODSC East 2026, called “Counterfactual Analysis with Bayesian Models: What Drives the Life Expectancy Gap?” Here’s the abstract Across nearly every country in the world, women live longer than men—but the size of this gap varies from about two...
Sean Carroll
367 | Jared Diamond on the Course of History and the Role of Leaders
The course of history is affected by many things, including the political and social situations of...
a week ago
The course of history is affected by many things, including the political and social situations of large groups of people, […]
The Works in...
Notes on Progress: Doing science backwards
Preregistering research as a cure for scientific bias
2nd Aug 2022
Preregistering research as a cure for scientific bias
The Quanta Podcast
The Fundamental Tension at the Heart of Math
We tend to think of math as all about logic and rigor. But what “rigor” actually means has been...
7th Apr 2026
We tend to think of math as all about logic and rigor. But what “rigor” actually means has been shaken up quite a few times over the past few centuries. The newest attempt to formalize math comes in the form of the computer program Lean. Mathematicians have mixed feelings. On...
Conservation...
What on Earth is ‘sustainable’ coffee?
15th Aug 2024
Works in Progress...
Steam networks
New York’s skyscrapers soar above a century-old steam network that still warms the city. While the...
13th Mar 2025
New York’s skyscrapers soar above a century-old steam network that still warms the city. While the rest of the world moved to hot water, Manhattanites still buy steam by the megapound.
Asterisk
The Institute Behind Taiwan’s Chip Dominance
TSMC (and most of Taiwan’s chip industry) spun out of one government research institute. How did...
16th Mar 2026
TSMC (and most of Taiwan’s chip industry) spun out of one government research institute. How did ITRI implement one of the most successful industrial policy programs of all time?
Yale E360
Alaska Wolf Found With Record Amount of Mercury, a Sign of Growing Contamination
When Alaska’s wolves began eating sea otters, it looked like a story of adaptation. Then they...
2nd Jan 2026
When Alaska’s wolves began eating sea otters, it looked like a story of adaptation. Then they started getting sick.
Read more on E360 →
Works in Progress...
Machines for living in
Buildings are not just art – they are the places people live in, work in, and experience every day....
5th Dec 2024
Buildings are not just art – they are the places people live in, work in, and experience every day. True functionalism combines utility and beauty for the people who use it most.
Casey Handmer's blog
How to build a crazy awesome Australian immigration system
The Australian immigration system must exclude dickheads, bullshitters, and bludgers. This post has...
10th Jun 2026
The Australian immigration system must exclude dickheads, bullshitters, and bludgers. This post has been inspired by Joe Walker’s recent set of three exemplary interviews (Martin Parkinson (former Treasury, author of 2023 migration review), Mark Cully (historian), Mike Pezzullo...
Uncharted...
How Can Europe Improve Its Immigration
Through getting better immigrants, rejecting coutnerproductive ones, and managing the existing ones...
2nd Jun 2026
Through getting better immigrants, rejecting coutnerproductive ones, and managing the existing ones better.
lcamtuf’s thing
Sierpiński triangle? In my bitwise AND?
Exploring a peculiar bit-twiddling hack at the intersection of 1980s geek sensibilities.
10th May 2025
Exploring a peculiar bit-twiddling hack at the intersection of 1980s geek sensibilities.
Quantum Frontiers
It from Qubit: The Last Hurrah
Editor’s note: Since 2015, the Simons Foundation has supported the “It from Qubit” collaboration, a...
9th Aug 2023
Editor’s note: Since 2015, the Simons Foundation has supported the “It from Qubit” collaboration, a group of scientists drawing on ideas from quantum information theory to address deep issues in fundamental physics. The collaboration held its “Last Hurrah” event at … Continue...
NeuroLogica Blog
Using Sound to Modulate the Brain
The technique is called holographic transcranial ultrasound neuromodulation – which sounds like a...
6th Oct 2025
The technique is called holographic transcranial ultrasound neuromodulation – which sounds like a mouthful but just means using multiple sound waves in the ultrasonic frequency to affect brain function. Most people know about ultrasound as an imaging technique, used, for example,...
The Quanta Podcast
How to Cut Cake Fairly and Finally Eat It Too
Computer scientists have come up with a bounded algorithm that can fairly divide a cake among any...
10th Nov 2016
Computer scientists have come up with a bounded algorithm that can fairly divide a cake among any number of people.
The post How to Cut Cake Fairly and Finally Eat It Too first appeared on Quanta Magazine
The Works in...
Heat waves
Why a hotter world might be a more dangerous, violent, and less productive one
12th Jul 2024
Why a hotter world might be a more dangerous, violent, and less productive one
Long Now
Sam Harris: The View from the End of the World
### On necessary heresy
With gentle demeanor and tight argument, Sam Harris carried an overflow...
10th Dec 2005
### On necessary heresy
With gentle demeanor and tight argument, Sam Harris carried an overflow audience into the core of one of the crucial issues of our time: What makes some religions lethal? How do they employ aggressive irrationality to justify threatening and controlling...
Long Now
Jennifer Granick: Modern Surveillance: Why You Should Care and What You Can Do
The future of privacy begins with the current state of surveillance. The 21st century practices of...
4th May 2020
The future of privacy begins with the current state of surveillance. The 21st century practices of US intelligence agencies push the technological, legal and political limits of lawful surveillance. Jennifer Granick is a civil liberties and privacy law expert with the American...
Andrew Fraknoi –...
Eclipse of the Sun Coming in One Week
Saturday Oct. 14 North America will be treated to an eclipse of the Sun.
The post Eclipse of the Sun...
8th Oct 2023
Saturday Oct. 14 North America will be treated to an eclipse of the Sun.
The post Eclipse of the Sun Coming in One Week appeared first on Andrew Fraknoi - Astronomy Lectures - Astronomy Education Resources.
Long Now
Eric Cline: 1177 B.C.: When Civilization Collapsed
### When chaos overwhelmed civilization
Archaeologist Cline began by declaring that the time he...
12th Jan 2016
### When chaos overwhelmed civilization
Archaeologist Cline began by declaring that the time he would most like to be transported to is the Late Bronze Age in the Mediterranean—the five centuries between 1700 and 1200 B.C. In those centuries eight advanced societies were densely...
Long Now
Vernor Vinge: What If the Singularity Does NOT Happen?
### Non-Singularity scenarios
Vinge began by declaring that he still believes that a Singularity...
16th Feb 2007
### Non-Singularity scenarios
Vinge began by declaring that he still believes that a Singularity event in the next few decades is the most likely outcome-- meaning that self-accelerating technologies will speed up to the point of so profound a transformation that the other side...
Melting Asphalt
Social Status II: Cults and Loyalty
So my previous post on social status was recently treated to a review/critique by Scott Alexander...
2nd Nov 2015
So my previous post on social status was recently treated to a review/critique by Scott Alexander over at Slate Star Codex. I expect most of my readers are already big fans of Scott's blog (as am I). But for those…
Read more ›
Long Now
Melody Jue: Ocean Memory
The ocean is not empty. It is a vast storage facility of memory agents. Ocean bodies use the...
9th Apr 2026
The ocean is not empty. It is a vast storage facility of memory agents. Ocean bodies use the chemical signatures of seawater for memory and intelligence in ways we can barely imagine. In her Talk, Melody Jue said our struggle to understand ocean memory comes from our terrestrial...
Cremieux Recueil
Will Making Your Kids Tall Shorten Their Lives?
Bonus: How to get human growth hormone (HGH) for cheap
1st Jul 2026
Bonus: How to get human growth hormone (HGH) for cheap
Long Now
John Brockman: Possible Minds
John Brockman's newly released book [_Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at...
13th Mar 2019
John Brockman's newly released book [_Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI_](https://smile.amazon.com/Possible-Minds-Twenty-Five-Ways-Looking-ebook/dp/B07D6C1X3X/ref=sr_1_1) is the springboard for this Seminar on Artificial Intelligence. Brockman will interview...
Many Worlds
Preparing For The Habitable Worlds Observatory, Our Best Shot at Finding ET Life
In a solar system far, far away, life of some sort is just waiting to be found. Or so the world of...
17th Oct 2023
In a solar system far, far away, life of some sort is just waiting to be found. Or so the world of astrobiology sure hopes it is. The new player in the astrobiology world, now called the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), is planned to launch in the 2040s if all goes well. ...
Uncharted...
Things I Learned at the 2025 Progress Conference
Neural Implants with Actual Neurons, Drone Delivery, Freedom of Speech and AI, Fact-Checking...
3rd Dec 2025
Neural Implants with Actual Neurons, Drone Delivery, Freedom of Speech and AI, Fact-Checking Tech, When AI Will Manage Entire Companies, Ecoterrorists Could Stop Global Warming, and more
Long Now
Stephen Pyne: Fire Slow, Fire Fast, Fire Deep
### Ecological wildfire
“We are uniquely fire creatures,” Pyne began, “on a uniquely fire planet.”...
10th Feb 2016
### Ecological wildfire
“We are uniquely fire creatures,” Pyne began, “on a uniquely fire planet.” Life itself is a form of slow metabolic combustion—which eventually created oxygen and burnable vegetation that allowed fast combustion, ignited by lightning. Humans came along and...
Probably...
Multiple Regression with StatsModels
This is the third is a series of excerpts from Elements of Data Science which available from...
4th Dec 2024
This is the third is a series of excerpts from Elements of Data Science which available from Lulu.com and online booksellers. It’s from Chapter 10, which is about multiple regression. You can read the complete chapter here, or run the Jupyter notebook on Colab. In the previous...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Weird health insurance concepts | Out-Of-Pocket
Intercompany eliminations, copay shenanigans, and reference-based pricing
6th Nov 2024
Intercompany eliminations, copay shenanigans, and reference-based pricing
The Quanta Podcast
Fossil DNA Reveals New Twists in Modern Human Origins
Modern humans and more ancient hominins interbred many times throughout Eurasia and Africa, and the...
13th Aug 2020
Modern humans and more ancient hominins interbred many times throughout Eurasia and Africa, and the genetic flow went both ways.
The post Fossil DNA Reveals New Twists in Modern Human Origins first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
How Much Do Couples Share Traits?
Do birds of a feather flock together, or do opposites attract? These are both common aphorisms,...
5th Sep 2023
Do birds of a feather flock together, or do opposites attract? These are both common aphorisms, which means that they are commonly offered as generally accepted truths, but also that they may by wrong. People like pithy phrases, so they spread prolifically, but that does not mean...
The Roots of...
What I’ve been reading, November 2023
A ~monthly feature. Recent blog posts and news stories are generally omitted; you can find them in...
7th Nov 2023
A ~monthly feature. Recent blog posts and news stories are generally omitted; you can find them in my links digests. All emphasis in bold in the quotes below was added by me.
Books
Finished Lynn White, Medieval Technology and Social Change (1962). Last time I talked about the...
Eukaryote Writes...
The rare, deadly virus lurking in the Southwest US, and the bigger picture
If you live in this one county in California, you might be more likely to die from Sin Nombre Virus...
14th Nov 2025
If you live in this one county in California, you might be more likely to die from Sin Nombre Virus than in a car crash.
The Quanta Podcast
Brain’s ‘Background Noise’ May Hold Clues to Persistent Mysteries
By digging out signals hidden within the brain’s electrical chatter, scientists are getting new...
13th May 2021
By digging out signals hidden within the brain’s electrical chatter, scientists are getting new insights into sleep, aging and more.
The post Brain’s ‘Background Noise’ May Hold Clues to Persistent Mysteries first appeared on Quanta Magazine
The Quanta Podcast
The Brain Has a 'Low-Power Mode' That Blunts Our Senses
Neuroscientists uncovered an energy-saving mode in vision-system neurons that works at the cost of...
12th Oct 2022
Neuroscientists uncovered an energy-saving mode in vision-system neurons that works at the cost of being able to see fine-grained details. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Unanswered Questions” by Kevin MacLeod.
Long Now
Drew Endy & Jim Thomas: Synthetic Biology Debate
### Terms of Biocontainment
"I want to develop tools that make biology easy to engineer," Drew Endy...
18th Nov 2008
### Terms of Biocontainment
"I want to develop tools that make biology easy to engineer," Drew Endy began. The first purpose is better understanding fundamental biological mechanisms through "learning by building." The toolkit of Synthetic Biology starts with DNA construction...
The Roots of...
Links and short notes, 2025-12-19
The links digest is back, baby!
I got so busy writing The Techno-Humanist Manifesto this year that...
20th Dec 2025
The links digest is back, baby!
I got so busy writing The Techno-Humanist Manifesto this year that after May I stopped doing the links digest and my monthly reading updates. I’m bringing them back now (although we’ll see what frequency I can keep up). This one covers the last two...
The Quanta Podcast
Neutrinos Lead to Unexpected Discovery in Basic Math
Three physicists stumbled across an unexpected relationship between some of the most ubiquitous...
8th Oct 2020
Three physicists stumbled across an unexpected relationship between some of the most ubiquitous objects in math.
The post Neutrinos Lead to Unexpected Discovery in Basic Math first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quantum Frontiers
Eight highlights from publishing a science book for the general public
What’s it like to publish a book? I’ve faced the question again and again this year, as my book...
19th Dec 2022
What’s it like to publish a book? I’ve faced the question again and again this year, as my book Quantum Steampunk hit bookshelves in April. Two responses suggest themselves. On the one hand, I channel the Beatles: It’s a hard … Continue reading →
Long Now
Steven Pinker: The Decline of Violence
### The Long Peace
“Nothing can be more gentle than man in his primitive state,” declared Rousseau...
9th Oct 2012
### The Long Peace
“Nothing can be more gentle than man in his primitive state,” declared Rousseau in the 18th century. A century earlier, Thomas Hobbes wrote, “In the state of nature the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” The evidence shows that Rousseau...
Eukaryote Writes...
COVID-19 FAQ
A lot of people have been asking me questions about the COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) outbreak, in my...
12th Mar 2020
A lot of people have been asking me questions about the COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) outbreak, in my informal capacity as “local biodefense person”.
Long Now
Stephen Lansing: Perfect Order: A Thousand Years in Bali
### Hidden order in the Balinese "religion of water"
With lucid exposition and gorgeous graphics,...
14th Feb 2006
### Hidden order in the Balinese "religion of water"
With lucid exposition and gorgeous graphics, anthropologist Stephen Lansing exposed the hidden structure and profound health of the traditional Balinese rice growing practices. The intensely productive terraced rice paddies of...
Long Now
Neal Stephenson: ANATHEM Book Launch Event
### _Anathem_ book launch
Neal Stephenson's nearly thousand page tome...
9th Sep 2008
### _Anathem_ book launch
Neal Stephenson's nearly thousand page tome [_Anathem_](https://longnow.org/anathem/) was inspired in part by Long Now's [10,000 Year Clock](https://longnow.org/projects/clock/) project, and so a collaboration on the launch event was a natural fit. With...
Apoorva Srinivasan
what's happened since the human genome project
When the human genome project was deemed “complete” in 2003, it was met with incredible fanfare. The...
17th May 2022
When the human genome project was deemed “complete” in 2003, it was met with incredible fanfare. The entire project leading up to that moment had all the drama to keep its audience enthralled. Fierce rivalry between a public and private institution, multiple countries involved,...
ToughSF
Moto-Orion: Mechanized Nuclear Pulse Propulsion
The Orion nuclear pulse propulsion concept has been around for over six decades now. It is powerful...
4th Jan 2021
The Orion nuclear pulse propulsion concept has been around for over six decades now. It is powerful and robust, but lacks the flexibility and features we expect from many more modern designs.
Can we give it those additional capabilities?
That cutaway is one of Matthew Paul...
Yale E360
How Herbicide Drift from Farms Is Harming Trees in Midwest
Researchers are starting to pay closer attention to the widespread damage wrought by agricultural...
25th Apr 2025
Researchers are starting to pay closer attention to the widespread damage wrought by agricultural herbicides. Drifting sprays may not kill trees, shrubs, and other nontarget plants outright, but experts believe they are making them vulnerable to insects, fungi, and disease.
Read...
Explorations of an...
A Month In Northern Peru, Part 8: Pale-billed Antpittas In The Elfin Forest (February 10, 2024)
February 10, 2024
The Pale-billed Antpitta is a large, fancy-looking Grallaria antpitta only found...
8th Jun 2024
February 10, 2024
The Pale-billed Antpitta is a large, fancy-looking Grallaria antpitta only found in the high Andes of northern Peru. Because of its proclivity towards dense forest with an abundance of bamboo, there are few places where this species can be easily found. These...
Works in Progress...
Liberté, égalité, radioactivité
France built 40 nuclear reactors in a decade. Here’s how they did it, and how the world can follow...
4th Sep 2025
France built 40 nuclear reactors in a decade. Here’s how they did it, and how the world can follow their lead today.
Explorations of an...
Dominican Republic, October 2025: Introduction and Parque Nacional Los Haitises
I have recently returned from an eight-day blitz of the Dominican Republic with my wife, Laura, and...
29th Oct 2025
I have recently returned from an eight-day blitz of the Dominican Republic with my wife, Laura, and good friend, Daniel Riley. Now October isn't really an ideal time for a birding trip to the Dominican Republic for a few reasons. First, October is the off-season and few birds are...
The Quanta Podcast
The Art of Teaching Math and Science
The impasse in math and science instruction runs deeper than test scores or the latest educational...
26th Jan 2017
The impasse in math and science instruction runs deeper than test scores or the latest educational theory. What can we learn from the best teachers on the front lines?
The post The Art of Teaching Math and Science first appeared on Quanta Magazine
The Quanta Podcast
Mathematician Hurls Structure and Disorder Into Century-Old Problem
A new paper shows how to create longer disordered strings than mathematicians had thought possible,...
3rd Feb 2022
A new paper shows how to create longer disordered strings than mathematicians had thought possible, proving that a well-known recent conjecture is “spectacularly wrong.”
The post Mathematician Hurls Structure and Disorder Into Century-Old Problem first appeared on...
Beautiful Public...
Trademark Design Codes
The United States Patent and Trademark Office has a system of 1,400 descriptive "design codes"...
9th Apr 2024
The United States Patent and Trademark Office has a system of 1,400 descriptive "design codes" allowing you to search for trademarks with “Rickshaws”, “Centaurs” or “Mechanical women”.
NeuroLogica Blog
What Is Orbitronics
You have definitely heard of electronics. You may (if you are a tech nerd like me) have heard of...
1st Oct 2024
You have definitely heard of electronics. You may (if you are a tech nerd like me) have heard of spintronics and photonics. Now there is also the possibility of orbitronics. What do these cool-sounding words mean? Electronic technology is one of those core technologies that has...
IEEE Spectrum
Esoteric Languages Challenge Coders to Think Way Outside the Box
Have you ever tried programming with a language that uses musical notation? What about a language...
4th Sep 2025
Have you ever tried programming with a language that uses musical notation? What about a language that never runs programs the same way? What about a language where you write code with photographs?
All exist, among many others, in the world of esoteric programming languages, and...
Long Now
Caroline Winterer: The Art and Science of Deep Time: Conceiving the Inconceivable in the 19th...
The ambition to think on the scale of thousands, millions, even billion of years emerged in the 19th...
6th Feb 2020
The ambition to think on the scale of thousands, millions, even billion of years emerged in the 19th century. Historian and author [Caroline Winterer](https://history.stanford.edu/people/caroline-winterer) chronicles how the concept of “deep time” has inspired and puzzled...
Long Now
Chris Anderson: The Makers Revolution
### Desktop manufacturing changes world
We’re now entering the third industrial revolution,...
20th Feb 2013
### Desktop manufacturing changes world
We’re now entering the third industrial revolution, Anderson said. The first one, which began with the spinning jenny in 01776, doubled the human life span and set population soaring. From the demographic perspective, "it’s as if nothing...
Yale E360
India Says Its Grasslands Are 'Wastelands.' Medieval Folklore Suggests Otherwise
The sprawling grasslands of western India are, in the popular imagination, the remains of woodlands...
2nd Feb 2026
The sprawling grasslands of western India are, in the popular imagination, the remains of woodlands that were leveled under British rule — areas to be reforested, rather than conserved. But a recent analysis of stories, songs, and poems from centuries past reveals that western...
Tikalon Blog by Dev...
Copper and Green Energy
The United States Department of Energy has updated its list of critically important materials. The...
1st Jul 2024
The United States Department of Energy has updated its list of critically important materials. The current list of 54 materials includes elements that are presently critical to a transition to green energy, such as the rare earth elements important to turbine generators, and...
The Quanta Podcast
A Bird’s-Eye View of Nature’s Hidden Order
Scientists are exploring a mysterious pattern, found in birds’ eyes, boxes of marbles and other...
5th Aug 2016
Scientists are exploring a mysterious pattern, found in birds’ eyes, boxes of marbles and other surprising places, that is neither regular nor random.
The post A Bird’s-Eye View of Nature’s Hidden Order first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Long Now
Geoffrey B West: Why Cities Keep on Growing, Corporations Always Die, and Life Gets Faster
### Superlinear Cities
"It's hard to kill a city," West began, "but easy to kill a company." The...
26th Jul 2011
### Superlinear Cities
"It's hard to kill a city," West began, "but easy to kill a company." The mean life of companies is 10 years. Cities routinely survive even nuclear bombs. And "cities are the crucible of civilization." They are the major source of innovation and wealth...
Chris Grossack's...
Talk -- What is Algebraic Geometry and Why Should You Care?
So an embarrassing amount of time ago (Feburary 17?) I gave a talk for the
undergraduate math club...
1st May 2023
So an embarrassing amount of time ago (Feburary 17?) I gave a talk for the
undergraduate math club titled
“What is Algebraic Geometry, and Why Should You Care?”. I think it went quite
well, and the audience seemed like they had a good time. I really wanted to
have the talk...
Explorations of an...
A Month In Northern Peru, Part 15: More From Explorama Lodge (February 20 - 21, 2024)
February 20, 2024
A Great Potoo was the first bird I heard this morning shortly after my alarm went...
1st Feb 2025
February 20, 2024
A Great Potoo was the first bird I heard this morning shortly after my alarm went off at 5:00 AM. It was going to be a good day.
At dinner the previous night Luis, Laura and I had come up with a plan for our full day at Explorama Lodge. We would begin by taking...
Long Now
Annalee Newitz: Science Needs Fiction
Science fiction does more than predict future inventions. Stories are a testbed for exploring the...
14th Jul 2020
Science fiction does more than predict future inventions. Stories are a testbed for exploring the unexpected ways people could incorporate technology into their cultures. Science journalist and novelist [Annalee Newitz](http://techsploitation.com) discusses how scientists,...
Long Now
Nicholas Negroponte: Beyond Digital
### A world of convergence
In education, Negroponte explained, there’s a fundamental distinction...
18th Apr 2013
### A world of convergence
In education, Negroponte explained, there’s a fundamental distinction between "instructionism" and "constructionism." "Constructionism is learning by discovery, by doing, by making. Instructionism is learning by being told." Negroponte’s lifelong...
Casey Handmer's blog
SLS is still a national disgrace
Four years ago, unable to find a comprehensive summary of the ongoing abject failure known as the...
2nd Oct 2024
Four years ago, unable to find a comprehensive summary of the ongoing abject failure known as the NASA SLS (Space Launch System), I wrote one. If you’re unfamiliar with the topic, you should read it first. It is hard to …
Long Now
Rick Prelinger: Lost Landscapes of San Francisco
### Four Dimensional Cities
Cities are designed and built in three dimensions. Watching...
20th Dec 2008
### Four Dimensional Cities
Cities are designed and built in three dimensions. Watching Prelinger's historic footage of San Francisco last night (to a more than overflowing crowd) reminds us however that one of the most compelling dimensions to a city is its fourth dimension -...
Bartosz Ciechanowski
Airfoil
The dream of soaring in the sky like a bird has captivated the human mind for ages. Although many...
27th Feb 2024
The dream of soaring in the sky like a bird has captivated the human mind for ages. Although many failed, some eventually succeeded in achieving that goal. These days we take air transportation for granted, but the physics of flight can still be puzzling.
In this article we’ll...
The Quanta Podcast
To Make Sense of the Present, Brains May Predict the Future
A controversial theory suggests that perception, motor control, memory and other brain functions all...
9th May 2019
A controversial theory suggests that perception, motor control, memory and other brain functions all depend on comparisons between ongoing actual experiences and the brain’s modeled expectations.
The post To Make Sense of the Present, Brains May Predict the Future...
Long Now
Martin Rees: Prospects for Humanity
To think usefully about humanity’s future, you have to bear everything in mind simultaneously....
22nd Jan 2019
To think usefully about humanity’s future, you have to bear everything in mind simultaneously. Nobody has managed that better than Martin Rees in his succinct summing-up book: _ON THE FUTURE: Prospects for Humanity_.
As the recent President of the Royal Society (and longtime...
Stephen Wolfram...
Instant Supercompute: Launching Wolfram Compute Services
To immediately enable Wolfram Compute Services in Version 14.3 Wolfram Desktop systems,...
2nd Dec 2025
To immediately enable Wolfram Compute Services in Version 14.3 Wolfram Desktop systems, run
RemoteBatchSubmissionEnvironment["WolframBatch"].
(The functionality is automatically available in the Wolfram Cloud.)
Scaling Up Your Computations
Let’s say you’ve done a computation in...
Casey Handmer's blog
To Conquer the Primary Energy Consumption Layer of Our Entire Civilization
[Originally posted on the Terraform blog April 3, 2025.] Three years ago we set out to make cheap...
8th Apr 2025
[Originally posted on the Terraform blog April 3, 2025.] Three years ago we set out to make cheap synthetic natural gas from sunlight and air. At the time I didn’t fully appreciate that we had kicked off the process of recompiling the foundation layer of our entire industrial...
The Works in...
Upzoning New Zealand
How a small country started building a lot of homes
1st Feb 2024
How a small country started building a lot of homes
Chris Grossack's...
A Cute Application of the Yoneda Lemma
Every few weeks recently I’ve been putting a new fun problem on one of the
whiteboards in the first...
17th Mar 2025
Every few weeks recently I’ve been putting a new fun problem on one of the
whiteboards in the first year office. These are often inspired by something
I saw on MSE, and I’m usually choosing problems that force you to understand
something fundamental really well. Then I usually...
Conservation...
To save coffee's future, 100 million trees — and counting
1st Apr 2026
SubAnima
The Forgotten Piece of Evolutionary Theory
What if we took the 'struggle for life' seriously again?
22nd Jul 2023
What if we took the 'struggle for life' seriously again?
Works in Progress...
There was no great stagnation
We may not have flying cars but we do have incredible information technology. We’re mismeasuring the...
12th Oct 2022
We may not have flying cars but we do have incredible information technology. We’re mismeasuring the huge benefits it is bringing.
The Quanta Podcast
The Case Against Dark Matter
A proposed theory of gravity does away with dark matter, even as new astrophysical findings...
8th Dec 2016
A proposed theory of gravity does away with dark matter, even as new astrophysical findings challenge the need for galaxies full of the invisible mystery particles.
The post The Case Against Dark Matter first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Works in Progress...
Buyers of first resort
How do technologies get off the ground? As well as seed funding, many of the best technologies...
14th Sep 2021
How do technologies get off the ground? As well as seed funding, many of the best technologies require Buyers of First Resort, which buy products until they improve enough to get to efficient scale.
Quantum Frontiers
Quantum Algorithms: A Call To Action
Quantum computing finds itself in a peculiar situation. The number one question asked about quantum...
21st Apr 2025
Quantum computing finds itself in a peculiar situation. The number one question asked about quantum computers by outsiders is very common sensical: What are they good for? The honest answer reveals an elephant in the room: We don’t fully know yet. For theorists like me, it’s an...
The Quanta Podcast
A New World’s Extraordinary Orbit Points to Planet Nine
Astronomers argue that there’s an undiscovered giant planet far beyond the orbit of Neptune. A newly...
14th Mar 2019
Astronomers argue that there’s an undiscovered giant planet far beyond the orbit of Neptune. A newly discovered rocky body has added evidence to the circumstantial case for it.
The post A New World’s Extraordinary Orbit Points to Planet Nine first appeared on Quanta...
Long Now
Arthur Ganson: Machines and the Breath of Time
### Dancing chairs
"You follow the feeling of the piece," Ganson explained, "and then wrestle it...
15th Sep 2009
### Dancing chairs
"You follow the feeling of the piece," Ganson explained, "and then wrestle it into physicality." As long as the idea is nonphysical, it is permanent; it becomes temporary as a physical device; and then it becomes permanent again in the mind of the viewer.
As...
IEEE Spectrum
How the Designer of the First Hydrogen Bomb Got the Gig
Richard Garwin is one of the most decorated and successful engineers of the 20th century. The IEEE...
2nd Sep 2024
Richard Garwin is one of the most decorated and successful engineers of the 20th century. The IEEE Life Fellow has won the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science, France’s La Grande Médaille de l’Académie des Sciences, and is one of just a handful of people...
Damn Interesting
A Blight on Soviet Science
On a hazy afternoon in March 1927, a Russian scientist was walking through the dense forests of...
4th Mar 2021
On a hazy afternoon in March 1927, a Russian scientist was walking through the dense forests of Abyssinia, ducking under low-hanging branches and stopping to inspect the wild coffee trees lining his path. Accompanied by a group of local guides, the young traveller had been hiking...
NeuroLogica Blog
A Fully Renewable Grid?
My long-stated position (although certainly modifiable in the face of any new evidence,...
2nd Feb 2026
My long-stated position (although certainly modifiable in the face of any new evidence, technological advance, or good arguments) is that the optimal pathway to most rapidly decarbonize our electrical infrastructure is to pursue all low-carbon options. I have not heard anything...
Stephen Wolfram...
What Can We Learn about Engineering and Innovation from Half a Century of the Game of Life Cellular...
Metaengineering and Laws of Innovation Things are invented. Things are discovered. And somehow...
18th Mar 2025
Metaengineering and Laws of Innovation Things are invented. Things are discovered. And somehow there’s an arc of progress that’s formed. But are there what amount to “laws of innovation” that govern that arc of progress? There are some exponential and other laws that purport to...
Long Now
George P. Shultz: Perspective
Perspective? No one has a longer or better-informed view of world affairs and America's role than...
2nd Aug 2018
Perspective? No one has a longer or better-informed view of world affairs and America's role than George Shultz, now 97. (Henry Kissinger is only 95.)
Secretary Shultz was a US Marine Captain in World War II. After becoming an economics professor at MIT and the University of...
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